On Monday, the Houston Texans were going to bring in former All-Pro safety Earl Thomas for a workout. On Tuesday, the team suddenly nixed the workout.
In his Wednesday presser with the Houston media, coach and general manager Bill O’Brien explained why the club decided to forgo the workout with Thomas.
“Earl Thomas is a hell of a player,” O’Brien said via Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. “He’s had a great career. Again, we had a bunch of guys in and we decided to cancel. We’ll see how it goes moving forward. That’s really what it was. It’s not anything other than that and we’ve got a lot of respect for Earl.”
The Texans had Thomas at a local hotel and were awaiting the results of a COVID test. However, the COVID positive tests affecting the Tennessee Titans and subsequently the contact tracing involving the Minnesota Vikings, Houston’s Week 4 opponent, had the Texans considering whether or not to workout anybody at all.
“We had a bunch of guys in here ready to work out,” said O’Brien. “We said instead of keeping those guys holed up in a hotel, potentially to be there for several days. We didn’t know at that point. It was better for us to just cancel the workouts.”
The Texans placed safety A.J. Moore on injured reserve with a hamstring injury. Although Moore will be able to come back as soon as three weeks, the Texans are still down a safety in the meantime.